There Will Be Blood was a movie that both shocked and enthralled me. Initially, I was skeptical about its entertainment value, as a movie about oil drilling in California in the early part of the 20th century did not seem very riveting. This movie destroyed my doubt by spinning a tale of greed, unchecked capitalism, and the determination to succeed at all costs.

The movie follows the two-decade career of Daniel Plainview, (Daniel Day-Lewis) a self-termed “oil man” determined to succeed in the petroleum business. Plainview, by all accounts, is a sociopath who only cares about success, and is obsessed with destroying his competition. He abhors large oil companies such as Standard Oil; he begins the movie with a single oil well in the hills of California, using the profits from this well to buy more land to expand his oil empire. He eventually starts his own drilling company with his adopted son HW who, at age 10, serves as his business partner. Plainview’s career takes a monumental upswing when a young man tells him of a small, impoverished town in Southern California that has massive untapped oil fields. Daniel travels to the town and tricks the largest landowner into selling him all of his land for “partridge hunting.” Once Plainview confirms the existence of massive reserves of oil in the town, he goes to work.

Daniel Day-Lewis was absolutely fantastic in this movie, playing a deeply morally flawed man with rarely seen skill and finesse. Lewis’ body language speaks volumes as he surveys an oil field, with the camera focused on his face, his eyes practically glistening with greed. Day-Lewis’ intense acting style is perfect for Plainview’s obsessive character, as Plainview says in the movie “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.”

Plainview’s competitive personality is both his greatest ally and greatest enemy during the movie, as his obsessive attitude forces him to greater lengths than his competitors, driving him to lease one of the largest oil fields in Southern California. However, with each successive success, Plainview loses more and more of his humanity, much like Walter White, the high school chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin on the show Breaking Bad. Plainview becomes less and less sympathetic of a character as the film progress, neglecting his young son, attacking people who speak against him, and generally disregarding the damage he causes to the people around him. By the end of the film Plainview is a wildly wealthy man, but a bitter alcoholic and a monster.

This movie is perfect for people who people who enjoyed shows such as Breaking Bad, which depicts how men can lose their humanity in the pursuit of success. By the end of the film, Plainview is almost unrecognizable, the shell of the man he was. This film can be a little tedious, due to long landscape shots with no dialogue, but if you are determine and patient, this film will absolutely amaze and shock you.

It’s hard to think of two funnier people in Hollywood today than Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart. The former is perhaps more beloved than any other comic out there, thanks to a long career of lead roles in comedy classics like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Elf, Taladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Blades of Glory. Meanwhile, the latter has experienced a meteoric rise to fame in recent years, using films like Think Like A Man, Ride Along, and About Last Night to go from high-grossing stand-up comedian to A-list actor.

As the two joined forces for this month’s Get Hard, they were kind enough to set aside some time to answer questions from college journalists in a 15-minute conference call. Here’s what they had to say:

Q: As two very successful comedians, is there anything you guys learned from one another while working on the film?

Kevin Hart: The one thing I’ve taken from Will is his approach to his craft. He’s very professional, very humble; he’s a guy that really appreciates everything. He’s grounded.Will Ferrell: Yes, I think Kevin and I share the same philosophy in terms of, you know we like to have a good time, but we’re thankful for what we’re doing professionally. But at the same time we try and stay grounded and work hard.

Q: What was it like working with director Etan Cohen, given it was his first time directing?

WF: It was a great experience working with Etan. You know, we surrounded him with a really good team, in terms of the first a.d. [Assistant Director] and director of photography. So, he was allowed to do what his strong point is, which is monitoring the comedy. You know, it’s a real benefit when you can have a writer as strong as Etan feeding you extra jokes.KH: From my side, I’ll pick up off what Will said. We got lucky, we got a guy who had his first time directing, though he had been behind the camera a lot, so he soaked up this knowledge. He was protected by a team of producers, who knew what they were doing as well. All in all, everyone helped each other. Etan’s confidence grew as the movie progressed and we got a final product because of it, so I tip my hat to him. He did a good job.

Q: How did Cohen end up taking the reins on Get Hard, and what made you want to work with him?

WF: Yes, Etan is obviously an established comedy writer here in Hollywood, given his track record. And I think he was just in town on a short list of guys who were ready to direct a feature; he had done a short film that had attracted some notice. But when you talked to him about a script, in terms of his articulation on story, he sounded like he was a director. And I think that’s what kind of gave us the confidence to want to work with him.

Plus, he also, in like a 1920s or 1930s way, wore those old khaki director pants and spoke through a bullhorn, so those things really make him appear as a director.

Q: What originally made you guys want to do this movie?

WF: Well, this was an idea that my friend Adam McKay had for a long time, and we kept talking about it. So we kind of generated the idea from our company. And as we started digging into the casting, and we thought it would be really great to pair up with, well, the first name we started with: Kevin. So we called him up, pitched him the idea, and lucky for us he was into it. He kind of helped right away in the development process, from the script to his character. That’s how it all kind of came together.

Q: Was there much improvisation on set, or did you guys mostly stick to script?

KH: Well, there was something on every page of the script, of course, but from that foundation, there was room for us to move around. We had great writers on the film, and they left room for us to explore our characters and play around.

Q: Why is it important to have the ability to laugh at some of the important social tensions you guys touch on in Get Hard?

WF: I think it’s a great way to explore our differences, once you kind of get through the chatter, we kind of realize how similar we all are. And you get that by examining through social comedy and you’re just able to point out how silly these attitudes are, that seem to pop up from time to time.KH: Well I can’t say it better than that.

Q: We’re in the age of remakes as a culture. So as a comedy duo, if you guys could team up again and remake a classic comedy, which ones would you do?

KH: Turner and Hooch!WF: Well, Kevin’s choice is Turner and Hooch.KH: Turner and Hooch! It would be amazing!WF: I believe that was Tom Hanks with a dog.KH: Yeah, you playing Hooch!WF: Okay, I want Hooch. All right, my choice … oh remake of a classic comedy! Kramer vs. Kramer!

Q: When you guys were preparing for the role, were there any prison movies or television shows that helped you prepare for the role?

KH: For me, yes, I watched a lot of Mask and Sanford and Son. It really put me in the position where I was ready to come to set every day and it got me ready for every day.WF: I watched a lot of shows on the cooking channel. It didn’t help me at all. It was actually just a waste of time and if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't have watched those shows.

Read Isaac's review of the film GET HARD here: http://www.nufec.com/blog/isaac-feldberg-on-get-hard

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: an affluent white guy walks into a prison and GETS RAPED. That is the pinnacle of humor, if you can even call it that, on display in Get Hard. It’s unquestionably one of the least funny movies Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart have ever been associated with – and certainly the most hateful.Ferrell takes on the plum role of James King, a privileged and preening Wall Street type who, convicted of tax evasion, faces a 10-year sentence in San Quentin State Prison. Abandoned by his gold-digger fiancée (Alison Brie) and his greedy boss (Craig T. Nelson), James knows he’s not prepared for the harsh environment. Moreover, being both racist and homophobic, his biggest concern about his situation is the prospect of being repeatedly sexually assaulted by larger, black inmates. Laughing yet?

To that end, James seeks out Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart), a hard-working family man stuck in a dead-end job at a car wash in a parking garage. Wrongly assuming that Darnell has spent time behind bars because of his skin color, James recruits him to toughen him up so that he might go un-raped at San Quentin.

It’s as contrived a set-up as it sounds but one that yields far less laughs than expected. One of the most important things about making a comedy, particularly one that deals with attitudes toward race and sexuality, is getting the angle right. Unfortunately, it may not have been possible for Get Hard to get its angle more wrong; the film does not thoughtfully address so much as spitefully ridicule race (both African-Americans and Latinos are most victimized) and homosexuality. To give one of many examples, there’s a scene in which Darnell has become convinced James will have to submit to other inmates, and so he decides to take James to a place where he can practice giving blowjobs. Dragged to a trendy hotspot for gay men, James ends up in a bathroom stall with a predatory older man (Veep’s Matt Walsh, understandably embarrassed), trying to perform fellatio. Determined but intensely horrified, he eventually crumples, sobbing desperately, on the man’s semi-flaccid penis. The idea behind the joke (gay people are so gross, aren’t they?) is almost as disturbing as the number of laughs it got from audience members in this reviewer’s screening.

Looking back on Get Hard in a few decades, one can only hope it’s viewed with the same derision and shock that is currently allotted for films like D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. That a mainstream Hollywood comedy still succumbs to gay-panic humor in 2015 is enough to turn your stomach.

It simply boggles the mind that Get Hard managed to spring from the horrendously misguided minds of director/co-writer Etan Cohen and co-writers Jay Martel and Ian Roberts all the way to theaters without anyone noticing that its comic premise was entirely built on a foundation of racism and homophobia.

However, it might be better to remain confounded by that than to contemplate the alternative: that people did notice and thought, especially in a cultural climate newly shaped by Ferguson and Black Lives Matter, that this nasty, dated waste of celluloid would get a pass.

Certainly, were Ferrell and Hart not in the leading roles, Get Hard would not have been backed so enthusiastically by Warner Bros. Outside of their involvement, the movie really has nothing going for it. Brie, a tremendously appealing comic actress, is trapped in the humiliating role of a sex kitten, eternally clad in lingerie or tight outfits and serving no purpose outside of eye candy. (As if Get Hard hadn’t racked up enough offenses already, it’s casually sexist throughout.) Cohen’s direction is as ugly as his script, ensuring the film can’t even produce a good-looking scene. And even the editing and music choices reek of laziness.

With all that in mind, the only question left unanswered is: how on Earth did Ferrell and Hart, two of the funniest people alive, end up in this mess? Together, they must have thought they would be unstoppable and, indeed, there’s one scene where the two play off each other so terrifically that it makes the vileness of the rest of the film all the more obvious. But both actors need to stop letting their agents read their scripts – or better yet, fire their agents. Enough career moves like Get Hard could sink even the mightiest of performers.

Instead of saying anything of value about modern race relations in America, cultural perceptions of sexuality in a time more accepting of non-straight orientations or even the wealth divide, Get Hard jeers. It points its finger, gives a contemptuous smile and asks us to join it in denigrating huge swaths of people for attributes that haven’t been admissible punch-lines in decades. It is the public’s duty to wholeheartedly reject that repugnant invitation, even (or is it especially?) with actors as compulsively lovable as Ferrell and Hart delivering it.

Danny Collins tells the story of a washed-up, but enormously successful, singer-songwriter (Al Pacino) who hit his prime in the early 1970s and hasn’t seen personal fulfillment in half a lifetime. Decades of singing the same songs over and over again have brought Collins to rock bottom, which happens to be the bottom of a whiskey glass.

The story opens with a grandiose concert that Collins goes through methodically and then drinks the memory away quickly after. What’s actually unique about this story? Decades after giving an interview, just as his fame was coming into play, John Lennon wrote him a letter asking to meet up and discuss his future. The letter was lost in delivery, but winds up in Danny Collins hands 40 years later.

“What could have been?” That’s the question Collins tries to answer by canceling his tour, reconnecting with his son he never met in New Jersey, and flirting with a hotel manager. Can a hard drinking, fast living hot shot rock star start anew? Does everyone get a second chance? Can there be a character rebirth? These are the questions we have to answer watching this, and it’s excruciating. Jeff Bridges played a similar character in Bad Blake in the film, Crazy Heart in which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. That film took a similar plot and made it small and intimate, and the music was actually good. Danny Collins is a Paul McCartney- Tom Jones fusion that just doesn't deliver. The story is wrapped in cliches about rock stars and put into a world that doesn't even feel lived in. Everything feels built and clean like a set. Collins’ home, the hotel, and even the venues he plays in - none feel real. In fact, everything feels forced, including Al Pacino’s presence in the movie, in which he plays himself: classic “Whoo-ah” Pacino riding his celebrity charm into the shoes of Danny Collins. Dan Fogelman (writer of Crazy Stupid Love) makes his directorial debut with this post-Oscar season effort. That’s exactly what it is: an effort. Al Pacino is not the actor he once was, and his name can’t save a movie that’s so poorly written, produced, and directed. But I will take one tip from the Danny Collins book of regret: drink to forget.

Andy Robinson also interviewed Dan Fogelman

A “faux documentary” written and directed by Amy S. Weber, A Girl Like Her focuses on one high school in the aftermath of a student’s attempted suicide. Film crews initially flood South Brookdale High School to do a story on its recent ranking as one of the top schools in the country, but when sophomore Jessica Burns (Lexi Ainsworth) is hospitalized after swallowing pills, the reporters quickly change their focus. Rumors begin to circulate that bullying drove Jessica to it, and as everyone becomes more desperate for answers, fingers are pointed at one person: Avery Keller (Hunter King), Jessica’s former best friend.

Of course, bullying is as prevalent and problematic today as ever, as parents and school administrators continue to struggle with finding ways to prevent and deal with it (while some just don’t seem to want to acknowledge it in the first place). But Weber’s story is so painfully obvious that it brings nothing to the table. Jessica, the victim, is quiet and introverted, and really only has one friend. Avery, of course, is blonde, pretty, and popular (and dressed in all pink when we first meet her, naturally). About a year earlier, Jessica stopped Avery from cheating off of her test, and Avery has been harassing her ever since, by cornering her in the hallways, calling her names, and sending her countless hateful emails and text messages.

The most frustrating thing about this film is that it seems like Weber lacks a true understanding of what motivates teenagers to want to hurt each other, and how they go about doing it. Isn’t bullying (especially among girls) often much more insidious than a shove in the hallway or writing “everyone hates u” on someone’s Facebook wall? Should someone’s personal problems serve as an excuse for them to treat other people so badly? Bullying among high school girls is an incredibly complex issue, and this story only scratches the surface, in the most obvious way possible.

The film doesn’t take opportunities to make any sort of statement on the issue. In one scene, the school administration holds a conference with the parents about the incident, and everyone has the same questions: what is the administration going to do to punish the bully? And what are they going to do to prevent something like this from happening again? The administration doesn’t have any answers, probably because the filmmakers don’t either.

There is one bright spot here, though: the film’s young cast. Avery and Jessica are both troubled girls -albeit in different ways- but this comes through quite naturally in both actresses’ performances. There are a few moments that feel genuine, where it briefly isn’t obvious that the whole thing isn’t completely scripted.

Speaking of which, I’m not sure if I see the point of making a scripted, contrived documentary about a very real issue. Perhaps if Weber was willing to do some detective work, she could have achieved something raw and real, and that could have actually contributed to the discussion.

Minus the 2015 pop culture references and 3D glasses, Home is the universal equivalent to Lilo & Stitch. It could’ve been a great introductory sci-fi film for children, complete with extraterrestrial spaceships taking over post-modern Earth with vacuums that suck up humans and drop them off in the apocalyptic Hell that is Australia, but instead opts for the saccharine route where the focus persists on a color-changing alien with glue sticks for legs and a bodily-accurate girl from Barbados learning to become best friends and throwing house parties together. The idea is not original, but it’s current, and that’s enough for Dreamworks to rake in money between How to Train Your Dragon releases.

There aren’t a lot of things more bothersome than being explicitly told how to do something instead of letting me figure it out (see: video game tutorials). I’m 19 years old now, but I know animated children’s movies can pitch an out-of-this-world concept without having to explain it entirely point-blank in the first three minutes (see: Planet 51). Oh, the main character and member of the Boov species, begins narrating the movie by immediately answering any questions you didn’t have yet (“Who am I?” “Where are we?” “What do we do?”). It’s convenient because they’re exposition details that they don’t have to focus on for a long time, but the writers could have handled it better by incorporating the answers to those questions in maybe something like quick parable on what it’s like to wake up and live as a Boov.

In all honesty, Home could have done a lot of things better. It’s not horrible, but there are too many missed opportunities where the film could’ve been distinguished as “good” instead of “almost bearable.” There was no thought invested in how the humans should react to having Earth invaded by McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, no effort invested in how to make the animation look even as awesome as Dreamwork’s last outstanding work HTTYD, and no willingness to be anything other than a star-studded cash cow with racial/gender diversity. An almost-death scene with a Rihanna song playing in the background (a probable situation in my foreseeable future), an absent-minded decision to overthrow the king of the Boov race, and a cast of Rihanna, Steve Martin, and Jennifer Lopez demonstrate the lazy commercialism of Home. Also, The Big Bang Theory’s Jim “Bazinga!” Parsons’s voice for an hour and a half is pretty annoying. Parsons’s quirky and aloof sound is fitting for his role, but he does so much unnecessary “saying” instead of “doing” as Oh that it’s enough to drive you mad!

With a title that has barely anything to do with it, Home is a half-baked Rihanna music video with dancing almost-Minions at best. I don’t find it abysmal and something to totally avoid at the movies this weekend, but I definitely don’t appreciate the lack of creativity and exertion put forth by Dreamworks with this movie. In the theater I was in, children with 3D glasses too big for their faces put forth enough adorable laughs from time to time to validate Home as slight but charming. The stakes are high in the animation game now, and I hope Dreamworks can conceive better ideas than Home if it wants to remain a contender against Disney, Pixar, and Studio Ghibli.

Approximately every 60 years, in the city of Fuyuki, Japan, a conflict known as the Holy Grail War is fought. The purpose is for the world’s secretive society of mages (magic users) to fight over a priceless magical artifact. Called the Holy Grail even though it is not the literal Biblical chalice, it is capable of granting the victor one wish. In order to try to prevent the conflict from becoming a bloodbath and risking exposure of magical society to the wider world, the rules of the War have been codified over the course of time and are arbitrated by the Holy (Catholic) Church. Each of the seven participants, rather than fighting personally, summons a Heroic Spirit to fight on their behalf. Each of these is a spirit of a legendary figure from history or mythology, and these Spirits are sorted into “classes” (such as Saber, Archer, and Assassin) in order to preserve their identities (its easier to work magic on someone if you know their True Name). The Mage Masters have their Spirits fight each other, and when only one is left that Master can claim the Grail and make their wish. Or at least, that’s how its supposed to work; in actuality the rules don’t stop the Masters from ruthlessly murdering each other in pursuit of the Grail.

Fate/Zero is the story of the Fourth Holy Grail War, taking place in the 1990s. Featuring a large ensemble cast, our nominal main character is a man named Emiya Kiritsugu, known throughout the magical world as the “Magus Killer” for his expertise in assassinating magic-users. As a soldier and assassin who has witnessed all manner of warfare, Kiritsugu has developed a cynical and efficient way of thinking, always prepared to sacrifice the few and the innocent in order to save the many. His wish for the Grail is to end all conflict, so that his wife and daughter and anyone else will never have to see the things that he has. But the Heroic Spirit he summons, a Saber class, is the polar opposite of him. Where Kiritsugu is a cold and detached modern soldier, Saber is a medieval knight who personifies the highest concepts of chivalry and honor. Despite neither of them being able to understand each other, the two of them work together to fight the other Spirits and Masters to claim the Holy Grail.

Originally published as a light novel before being adapted into an anime series, Fate/Zero is one of many entries in the Fate setting by publishing company Type-Moon and is in turn part of a massive fictional setting called the Nasuverse (named after company co-founder Nasu Kinoko). It is a prequel series to an earlier entry called Fate/stay night, which tells the story of the Fifth Holy Grail War. It should be noted that since many of Type-Moon’s works were made as video games or visual novels, the continuity between works or even within works is a bit fuzzy, due to the games possessing branching storylines and multiple endings. However, since Fate/Zero was originally made as a light novel, it has only one narrative, making it the easiest Fate entry for new fans to delve into.

The Fate series, particularly Fate/Zero, has become well known for its extremely high production values and fantastic action scenes. Since it takes place in a modern magical world, Fate/Zero is able to include such unusual (and awesome) situations as a chase scene with a flying chariot and a motorcycle; mages fighting each other with spells, grenades, and sniper rifles; and the Japanese military calling in airstrikes on Eldritch abominations. What makes Fate/Zero especially notable compared to the other entries in the series is a much darker tone due to being written by Urobuchi Gen, nicknamed "Urobutcher" for his tendency to write bloody and tragic stories. As such, not only is the series very violent (good comparisons would be Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill or Neil Blomkamp’s District 9) but it is also entirely unafraid to kill off main characters.

The true core of Fate/Zero, however, is the philosophical struggle between Kiritsugu and Saber. Each of them personify a certain orientation toward conflict and, subsequently, human nature. Saber believes that human nature cannot be altered and that violence and war are inevitable. Therefore, war should be made as civilized and humane as possible by adopting chivalry and codes of honor between combatants. Kiritsugu believes that war is hell and that no one should have to suffer through it, which is why he is pursuing the Holy Grail. Still, he believes that goal is worthy enough to justify anything he has to do to achieve it, including manipulation and murder on a wide scale. This conflict is supplemented by the ideological and moral struggles of the other Masters and Spirits in the War, as the show delves deeply into what these people want and believe enough in to stake their lives on a bloody magical battle royale.

Possessing a fantastic mix of extremely well-choreographed action, engaging philosophical conflicts, and a beautifully tragic tone, Fate/Zero is a both a fantastic anime series on its own and a great introduction to the Fate series and Type-Moon’s work as a whole.

Rounders was a reasonably pleasing and entertaining gambling crime drama, yet I felt that there was nothing particularly special about it. In general, I really love gambling movies, such as Rain Man and Casino Royale. It is a great movie to kill a couple of hours, but lacks the substance to be truly great.

Rounders follows Michael McDermott (Matt Damon), a talented young poker player and first year law student who loses his entire savings in an underground poker game. After this loss, McDermott tries to go “legit” and gets a real job, only to be drawn back into the gambling world.

Every gambling crime-drama follows the same basic formula: at the beginning of the movie the hero, the main gambler, loses his entire savings to a highly skilled and amoral opponent. After this loss the hero, broke and despondent, tries to move away from gambling. Eventually however, the hero regains his or her confidence, and prevails in a rematch against their previous opponent, winning back their bankroll, with some profit on top. In this sense, Rounders does not deviate at all from this basic plot structure. What elevates Rounders from sheer mediocrity is its vibrant performances.

Matt Damon does an excellent playing the main character. McDermott is a good man, from a humble background, who genuinely wants to live a normal life, but he loves poker far too much to completely devote himself to law school. Damon taps his experiences playing Will Hunting in the movie Good Will Hunting- an impoverished genius from South Boston- when playing McDermott, making him feel grounded and relatable. However, the best performance in this movie was Edward Norton’s. Norton plays Worm, McDermott’s crooked friend from high school, who is a poker hustler who uses sleight of hand to rig poker games. Norton beautifully displays Worm’s imbalanced personality with his body language and speech patterns, always twitching and moving around, while incessantly chattering, confusing his friends and opponents alike. Damon and Norton have great onscreen chemistry, with Norton continuously irritating Damon, while Damon tries to contain his hyperactive partner.

Overall, Rounders is a pleasing film. I personally enjoy crime-dramas, and I particularly love gambling movies since I think that the strategy behind poker is fascinating, despite my pitiful lack of skill. That being said, Rounders offers little in the way of unique or innovative elements and only makes up for this lack of creativity with two great leading men, resulting in a fairly pleasing yet bland movie. All in all, Rounders is like a midnight snack: exactly what you need at midnight, but hardly quality at any other time of the day.

Set in the coral spread of Gordita Beach, CA at the start of the "far out" decade, Inherent Vice is a disorderly two-and-a-half-hour romp festered in unquestioning hippie belief that connotes the feeling of walking behind your lover at a really overcast beach and stepping over the prints of their bare feet already collapsing into rain and shadow. Doc Sportello, a feckless, pot-smoking private investigator who sports Elvis-style sideburns, is approached by his ex-girlfriend with a twisted story of her current beau that undoubtedly disturbs him and his fuzzy eyebrows before she utters a sweet but also unsettling "I need your help, Doc." From there, Inherent Vice whirls into a hazy and convoluted odyssey that includes everything from Asian pussy eating to zig-zag rolling papers.

"Inherent vice" is a marine insurance business term that describes breakage and damage you just can't avoid; windows break, coffee spills, plates fall. This sporadic nature of conflicts and humans defines the film and emphasizes the idea that there doesn't have to be a coherent logic to what you watch. The "incoherence" is characteristic of film noir, which Inherent Vice experiments with using a story that is impossible to follow on first watch and visually with a silhouette shot of Doc staring into complete fog. Doc’s constant perversions and drug use follow the author Thomas Pynchon's theme that American life is "something to be escaped from," and every odd character Doc runs into emanates this subtle sentiment of reverie. Paul Thomas Anderson captures the endless, stoned-out summer of Pynchon's epic beach read with mastery, and his adapted screenplay is one of the best film has seen in years. The initial shots of people from the neck down before the immeasurably talented Robert Elswit gradually zooms into their face until they just have to spill out their life stories and the awesome soundtrack that includes a CAN song accompanying an almost character-study of Doc are only a couple of the fantastic elements that create Inherent Vice as Anderson's most undervalued and overstated work to date.

Katherine Waterston is beautifully raw and Joaquin Phoenix delivers yet another awe-inspiring performance for the third year in a row (see: The Master in 2012, Herin 2013), but an overlooked character who isn't really "seen" stood out to me. Joanna Newsom, commonly known as a vocalist and harpist, debuts in her first film as a narrator and hopeful counselor existing only in Doc's imagination. Her folksy, Appalachian voice brings absolute radiance and eccentricity to Pynchon's written phrases like "clear as vodka that's been sitting in ice all day" or "Shasta's combination of face ingredients." Her narration sometimes peeks in to discuss the current state of affairs in Southern California or speak up for what's on Doc's mind, and Newsom is so perfectly casted because I felt shivers (good shivers) every time after she charmingly spoke. Her occasional visually concrete role as Doc's spiritual guide Sortilège (which is a French term that refers to "the practice of foretelling the future") is reassuring and highlights the earthy, mesmerizing presence she has in both her music and newfound acting career.

Inherent Vice isn't a blurry, stoner fantasyland filled with mumbling hippies, but an attempt to show our world at its finest via an expansive series of clues, clippings, and conversation blurbs against the strains of Neil Young. The ending is sharp, humorous, and so carefully drawn out that I found myself pondering and smiling about the love in this movie hours after I left the theater. Doc Sportello is a fool with the ethos of Kerouac and the nerve of Marlowe who attempts to find his way back into a past that, despite him and Shasta, had gone on into the future. Rollicking, light-hearted, and funny, Inherent Vice is the crown gem of the neo-noir era.

Based on the Oprah Book Club memoir by Cheryl Strayed, Wild is a roughly beautiful epic of endurance and self-reflection that feels more viscerally resonant than other big-screen survival stories. The 1,100 mile trek through a mostly desert landscape is dry and uninteresting, so writer Nick Hornby and director Jean-Marc Vallée decide to show more of Strayed's past and future in a daring but absorbing attempt.

It's never directly stated because dialogue is pretty sparse throughout the film, but Strayed is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail to become the woman her mother wanted her to be. Her mother, played by the gifted Laura Dern, was a woman who worked hard in her life despite her abusive environment, and she only expected the same out of her daughter. This is a pretty big idea that trailers and plot summaries don't mention; Laura Dern's maternal presence is in a majority of the film. Because the book it’s based on reminisces on events from her past that have led her to her lengthy journey, Hornby and Vallée utilize flashbacks as the main storytelling device of Wild. It's helpful and really cool in the beginning, when we're all still curious why Strayed would torture herself with a backpack that looks bigger than her. But as the film progresses, it starts to feel like 115 minutes long and the flashbacks interrupt what could be really groundbreaking moments for Strayed's self-development. Quick shots of boobs, shooting heroin, or Dern's kind face interfere with moments that I would like to focus on Witherspoon and her response to these past events. These flashbacks keep happening even in the final acts, when we fully understood why she's doing this hike like 40 minutes ago, and it's like Wild is trying to pull a deeply emotional reaction out of repetitive memories. It starts to feel not so nostalgic anymore, just annoying and rude. The use of these flashbacks is pretty polarizing, and some will find them to be perfectly spliced into the film, but I think a film about self-discovery and renewal should focus more on the present and future than on the same events from the past.

Wild is one of those films where the acting is better than the movie itself, and Reese Witherspoon delivers a strong and natural performance to a Vallée-made character. I loved watching her howl with wolves or get genuinely excited about cooking hot "mush," or just fall onto her knees and break down into tears in a strange rainforest environment. Witherspoon's facial expressions were able to excellently portray the hope and hopelessness that Strayed felt on her course, and her voiceovers, which convey her thoughts, are derisively comical and depict another form of her resilient attitude. Strayed's attitude and her gender are a part of the feminism this film carries, a topic like LGBT in Dallas Buyers Club that Vallée wanted to characterize this time. I'm glad he included it because otherwise the film would have felt totally unrealistic, and the "anything is possible for women" look that Witherspoon has at the end defies any doubts she or readers/viewers had about her making it to the border of Canada.

I wasn't a fan of Yves Bélanger's cinematography work in Wild at first. I thought it was severely lacking in wide-shots of how small Strayed is compared to the vast desert around her, or any really beautiful scenes of the expansive landscape she traveled through. But after much thought, I noticed and appreciated his decision to focus instead on the smaller parts of life through a more microscopic lens. Where a film like Gravity relished in scenes of Sandra Bullock traveling completely alone in an infinite, black "space," Wild wants Witherspoon to feel mighty by showing her as a larger than life creature to all the little rabbits and bugs she meets on her path. Bélanger focuses on symbols like her rugged shoes or makes his audience feel huge by panning over single blades of grass, and it's pretty cool how we can still feel the same kind of loneliness but it's also tinged with a subtle feeling of power. This combination is what defines Wild, a transformation of Strayed from a small female hiker looking for answers to an almost goddess of nature asking the question "What's next?".

Wild is an expedition into the self. It doesn't deserve to be looked over or ignored because Witherspoon delivers her career-best performance, and it's pretty fun to watch her evolve from carrying a tiny pink purse with a chihuahua in Legally Blonde to lugging a massive blue hiking backpack in this movie. Wild will be praised for it's tough female lead and it’s too good to write off as “Oscar bait,” but not quite quality enough to escape the categorization entirely.